The constant monitoring and management of IP addresses plays a crucial role in ensuring the networks of organizations remain online and available at all times.
With the constant expansion of organizations, especially larger enterprises, there are potentially hundreds of thousands of devices connected to a network at any point in time.
The assignment of IP addresses to these devices enables IT teams to keep track of their status and availability.
This task, and the use of additional software and tools to achieve it, is particularly critical in the aim of avoiding downtime and the potential financial, reputation or customer loss that follows it.
As it is neither practical nor feasible for IT teams to sit and monitor every IP address in an organization round-the-clock, IP address management software offers the capability to scan connectivity automatically.
These software and tools greatly ease the monitoring and management of resources by reviewing, managing and analyzing network traffic, interfaces and applications as well as organizing and tracking subnets.
All information collected through these largely automated processes is then centralized and displayed in user-friendly interfaces, with detailed reports on performance available.
The implementation of IP monitors and alerting systems further assist IT teams in ensuring all components run smoothly.
This grants IT teams the ability to track vital IP-connected devices and services in real time, thus ensuring business connectivity and allowing for the proactive configuration of an organization’s network.
When the detection of failures or possible issues arises, the software and tools raise an alarm and send notifications to relevant staff.
This system allows IT teams to react quickly, troubleshooting and resolving issues in a timely manner, while also supporting the early identification of problems before they occur.
IT teams can view all devices and the IPs assigned to them, which assists in the discovery and prevention of conflicts and network outages.
This information becomes essential when problems need to be resolved expediently.
Analyzed statistics allow for the easy identification of trends, assisting in planning IP capacity and keeping a close eye on traffic, identifying bandwidth-hungry applications and security threats.
This avoids negative consequences from a single IP address using too much bandwidth, improving server performance and reliability as well as the general upkeep of network health.
IP address management software also alerts IT teams if unusual network patterns potentially indicating a network breach or virus are discovered.
The detection of this, as well as spyware, ransomware and other malware attacks, is critical to avoid the compromising of an organization’s network or resources.
The monitoring of outflow of personal information to clients is also important, particularly if the organization forms part of the financial world.
IP address details are further necessary for regulatory or legal compliance, specifically in an information breach or issue with flow-on effects, as it assists IT teams in pinpointing where the issue or breach arose.
Overall, in the case of managing IP addresses, the use of software and tools notably affects the process.
They improve the monitoring capabilities of IT teams while also aiding in the faster identification and troubleshooting of issues, resulting in a more stable and efficiently run network.
With this in mind, we have gathered the top rated IP monitoring tools and software for you, detailing their capabilities and strengths, with download links and pricing structures listed beneath each tool.
Here’s the Best IP Monitor Software & Tools of 2024:
1. SolarWinds IP Address Manager – FREE TRIAL
SolarWinds IP Address Manager, or IPAM, is designed to save time and prevent costly errors, is an IP address management software that details network devices, servers and applications from a singular console.
It provides an extensive variety of reports and dashboards, allowing IT teams to compile reports and data, which Solarwinds IP Address Manager represents visually.
This overview allows for the easier and faster interpretation of statistics from the network environment.
The tracing of potential faults is simpler and quicker with the map overlay feature, allowing the IT team to trace out faults by looking at the logical connectivity of the network and WAN.
SolarWinds IP Address Manager also supports automated alerts, which the IT team receives on performance issues and on offline units, as well as basic remedial actions.
The capability to discover devices qiuckly combined with automatic recommendations for settings and an easy to use interface further adds time efficiency to IP address management.
SolarWinds IPAM also increases productivity with the ability to have individual network administrators monitoring their own specific range of IPs through the facilitation of IP administration.
SolarWinds IPAM supports the identification and management of IPv4 and IPv6 addresses and allows IT teams to view transient IP addresses.
It achieves this through the software’s active scanning capabilities, which discovers and tracks subnets as well as associated blocks.
This provides the easier identification of abandoned IP addresses and the ability to reclaim them. Through SolarWinds IPAM’s single console, the IT team can source available IP addresses, reserve and manage DNS entries.
With its use of automation, it saves time in the discovery and scanning of both IP addresses and subnets, while providing a complete overview of the performance health of an organization’s network.
With the aim of enhanced network reliability, SolarWinds IP Address Manager integrates DHCP and DNS into its IP address management as well as supporting multi-vendor on-premises and cloud DHCP and DNS.
SolarWinds IPAM allows IT teams to monitor these servers centrally.
With the inclusion of Microsoft, Cisco, Infoblox, ISC, BIND, Amazon Route 53 and Azure DNS, it further allows IT teams to remove, edit or create scopes, zones and records, applicable to Cisco, ISC, BIND and Microsoft servers.
Two-way consolidation with third-party software is also possible with API support with CRUD operations.
In the effort of speeding up the deployment of devices, SolarWinds IP Address Manager has an IP request form capable of automating and streamlining static IP address requests.
This provides the additional option to make reservations automatically or enable users to request IP addresses and it reporting system automatically tracks requests for either compliance or change management.
SolarWinds IPAM sends out alerts if a conflict with IP addresses, subnets or scopes and DNS entries are detected, quickening the process of troubleshooting issues arising.
This in turn limits their potential effect on performance, ensuring the network is running smoothly.
For deeper insight, the tool also provides detailed information on all IPs connected to the network, including how they are used, and keeps their history for investigation at a later stage.
Pricing:
Pricing for SolarWinds IP Address Manager starts at $1995.00 and you can download a 30 day trial or register for a free.
Official Website & Download Links:
https://www.solarwinds.com/ip-address-manager
2. ManageEngine OpUtils
ManageEngine OpUtils is an IP address management software that centralizes the viewing, tracking and identification of IP addresses, including IPv4 and IPv6 in its monitoring capabilities.
The software accepts multiple subnet inputs, which it scans at periodic intervals, allowing IT teams to gain the availability status of IP addresses in an entire enterprise network.
ManageEngine OpUtils supports the sorting of all subnets based on their usage or location into a hierarchal representation, creating an easier method of locating a particular subnet to obtain required details.
Its visual portrayal of information, as well as the ability to modify the tree and its nodes seamlessly, assists in the effective management and tracking of all IP addresses.
IT teams can manually add subnets or set them up to be auto-discovered from Routers, which once verified, will scan automatically in the background.
With the aim of exercising control over the management of IP addresses, ManageEngine OpUtils supports role-based administration, restricting technician roles to read-only access while granting administrators complete access.
The IP history in combination with the IP address management tool further assists in this task, allowing IT teams to track IP addresses allocated to specific users on any given date.
The software’s ability to audit changes made is vital and it logs all events performed, detailing the name of the user effecting the change as well as the time and date of the event.
Through its use of ICMP, SNMP, DNS and WMI it continuously scans subnets and gains details such as DNS name, Mac Address, state, system name, device type and more, further offering a complete history of the IP address allocations.
ManageEngine OpUtils allows IT teams to create their own columns to store user-defined values at both subnet and IP address level while also supporting the ability to add custom fields.
These provide contact details such as owner, location and telephone number, among others.
ManageEngine OpUtils integrates with Windows Active Directory to discover if an IP address relates to a computer object in the directory and retrieves the details of the computer object.
It updates the atabase at regular intervals during these scans to keep data synchronized.
The software further supports Microsoft DHCP servers, assisting in flexible scanning and alert notifications, allowing IT teams to monitor DHCP scopes for available IP addresses within them.
Its malleable scanning abilities allow IT teams to choose scanning options such as Ping, SNMP, DNS and more, with the option of disabling scanning for subnets behind firewalls that IT teams can manually mark as available or used.
ManageEngine OpUtils possesses a global search option, which speeds up the tracing of a particular IP address and its details while its alert functions notify IT teams immediately of any changes in the state of IP address availability via email.
It further automatically generates alerts when DNS reverse or forward lookup fails, if DNS forward lookup returns a different IP and if IP utilization of a subnet falls out of the range of a specified percentage.
Pricing:
Pricing for ManageEngine OpUtils Professional Edition starts at $345.00 with a $69.00 annual maintenance and support fee.
You can view the pricing structure here and request a personalized demo or quote here.
Official Website & Download Links:
https://www.manageengine.com/products/oputils/
3. Spiceworks IP Scanner
The Spiceworks IP Scanner is a free IP scanning and monitoring tool that automatically discovers devices on an organizations network.
Requiring minimal set up, the tool displays identified components on an easy-to-understand dashboard.
The information listed includes IP addresses, MAC addresses, operating systems, each device’s host name, vendors and more.
Whether they are up or down is also visible.
IT teams have the ability to sort through the data gathered by these factors or by detailed software as well as other hardware variables.
The IP scanner further automatically scans local subnets, while also offering IT teams the opportunity to define custom IP ranges.
The level of information collected depends on the device scanned.
The Spiceworks IP Scanner builds a list of everything it detects on the network within minutes, allowing IT teams to export and distribute the list as necessary.
This becomes invaluable in the search for unexpected or unwanted vendors or unauthorized devices connected to the network.
The included HelpDesk assists with investigations as well as the tracking and monitoring of all devices.
The Spiceworks IP Scanner further aids troubleshooting with its ability to quickly identify issues as well as find and fix security holes, with tickets created speedily in order to address problems discovered in a timely manner.
Price:
Spiceworks IP Scanner is available for free and you can view download information here.
Official Website & Download Links:
https://community.spiceworks.com/tools/ip-scan/
4. LightMesh IPAM
LightMesh IPAM designed its interface with simplicity, cleanliness and neatness in mind, allowing IT teams to monitor every device connected to an organization’s network from a single, central viewpoint.
Its modern and sophisticated display presents the collected information in an easy-to-decipher way while still maintaining the same functionality as other IP address management tools.
In focusing on this effort, its overview is not as customizable or detailed as other similar software.
Basic IP, DHCP, DNS and MAC address discovery as well as tracking is possible with LightMesh IPAM and it allows IT teams to oversee the availability and status of devices.
All process based changes to IP and DHCP configurations are instantaneous.
This allows IT teams maintain thorough and complete visibility as well as control over the all IP address management information and subnets at all times.
LightMesh IPAM offers web-based as well as command line utilities to scan an organization’s network, with both options discovering all IP addresses on the network regardless of its size or complexity.
If there is a preference to import spreadsheets, LightMesh IPAM supports this feature.
IT teams further have the ability to drill down to individual IP addresses as well as end devices within subnets, while LightMesh IPAM simultaneously provides a graphical overview of the network’s entire IP plan.
Additionally, LightMesh IPAM boasts a Time Machine for all data gathered specifically designed to measure change, its capabilities stretching further than most auditing solutions offered.
IT teams are able to review, rollback or replay all configuration changes that have occurred across the network environment.
This plays a critical role in the tracking, identification and resolving of potential issues arising, largely speeding up the process.
LightMesh IPAM also supports permissions management as well as multi-group security permissions.
This ensures staff members gain access to only the particular aspects of the network applicable to their duties, limiting their visibility into detailed network configurations.
It achieves this through its role-based access control mechanism, ensuring the risk of data leakage is minimal.
LightMesh further allows the alignment of users to specific customers, restricting them to the management of data associated with them.
Price:
The pricing structure for LightMesh IPAM starts at $200.00 per month, which you can view here or you can download a free trial for 30 days here.
Official Website & Download Links:
https://ipam.lightmesh.com/ipam
5. Visualware’s VisualPulse
Visualware’s VisualPulse, designed as a full network monitoring solution, hones its focus on the monitoring and management of IP addresses.
The software monitors up to 500 IP addresses concurrently, tracking multiple metrics to ensure all devices connected to an organization’s network are operational, responding and running smoothly.
Visualware’s VisualPulse further analyzes device latency and packet loss, creating reports on network problems found as well as metrics in real time.
Its allowance for ‘aliases’ of individual IP addresses assist in the fast identification of particular IP addresses, easing the process of troubleshooting and resolving potential issues.
The monitoring of multiple web pages or application ports is supported through Visualware’s VisualPulse’s multiple availability tests.
A simplified summary view reveals all monitored hosts in a small browser panel and assists with the quick identification of potential problems arising within the network.
The historical reports provided by Visualware’s VisualPulse further reveal visibility into performance and availability trends over the past hour, day or month.
This, in combination with its real-time reporting features, enable IT teams to detect, trace, troubleshoot and resolve problems with ease.
This ensures that overall network performance remains uninterrupted at all times.
With its additional benefit of web-based reports, IT teams can readily share information across an organization and Visualware’s VisualPulse further supports remote access through a browser.
This option comes with security options and restrictions as well as password-protected access.
IT Teams can further export all performance data logged to HTML or Excel if required and Visualware’s VisualPulse automated traceroute logging of alert conditions allows for the analysis of performance dips irrespective of when they happened.
Automated notifications immediately notify IT teams of intolerable response times or excessive latency, aiding in the faster resolving of issues to avoid downtime and costly outages.
These notification reports are color coded to indicate problems.
Price:
There are two versions of Visualware’s VisualPulse:
- Standard Edition starts at $295.00
- Professional Edition starts at $354.00
Alternatively, you can download a 15 day trial here.
Official Website & Download Links:
6. Infoblox IPAM and DHCP
Infloblox IPAM and DHCP aims to simplify both IP address and DHCP management through its automation and centralization of all aspects related to IP address provisioning and DHCP server management in conjunction with DNS.
It provides an integrated platform that supports all types of network environments, including data centers and hybrid cloud environments, with the overall goal of stable and efficient network performance.
Productivity and time saving is supported largely through Infloblox IPAM and DHCP’s automated capabilities, with the software allowing IT teams to reconfigure connections or turn devices on and off remotely.
This reduces costs while providing network insights through shared data and removing the need for manual processes and patchwork tools.
The automatic identification and subsequent quarantine of rogue devices by Infloblox IPAM and DHCP further assists in the lowering of costs as well as security risks.
With the constant need for networks to remain online and available at all times, the ability to anticipate IP address capacity with predictive analysis becomes essential.
Infloblox IPAM and DHCP discovers and monitors all IP assets across an organization’s network automatically, regardless of whether they extend to branch offices, remote locations, public or private clouds.
These are then analyzed in the content of the entire IT infrastructure, ensuring compliance with both regulatory and applicable corporate polices.
Infloblox IPAM and DHCP further supports this effort with the automatic detection of unmanaged devices in real time.
DHCP fingerprinting allows IT teams to profile all devices, with access to historical device data available, including IP and MAC addresses and their associations.
Using identity mapping, IP and MAC address are matched to Active Directory users.
This assists IT teams in analyzing resource users with the benefit of faster and more accurate troubleshooting of network and user-related issues.
Infloblox IPAM and DHCP’s resource delegation capabilities further allow IT teams to delegate the ownership of DNS zones to different staff, which greatly speeds up workflow.
Its customizable templates and versatile reporting, alerting abilities for IP addresses, network devices and assets helps to achieve this goal.
Price:
While there is no pricing structure listed Infoblox IPAM and DHCP, you can download a 60 day trial for here or contact them here.
Official Website & Download Links:
https://www.infoblox.com/products/ipam-dhcp/
7. BlueCat IPAM
BlueCat IPAM tracks and monitors IP addresses from a single web-based interface, with its overall functionality suited to larger data centers or web service enterprises in comparison to smaller organizations.
In the aim of providing a unified solution, the BlueCat IPAM integrates with BlueCat DNS/ DHCP Server flawlessly.
It further facilitates Microsoft DNS and DHCP, allowing IT teams to manage an organization’s IP address space as well as all core network services with ease.
IT Teams using BlueCat IPAM have the ability to adjust DNS and IP configurations quickly and frequently with little effort.
The tool’s delegation capabilities further assist workflow with its option of task assignment, reserving certain work for particular personnel while ensuring those who should not have access to aspects of the network do not.
While BlueCat IPAM comes with a steep learning curve relative to other software within the IP address management scope, it does have built-in IP modeling tools and network templates.
These, along with the automated identification of all devices connected to an organization’s network and all associated information, aim to simplify management of IP addresses.
As a commercial grade, fully scalable and automated tool, BlueCat IPAM seamlessly meets the needs that an evolving and ever-increasing pace demands on a dynamic network.
It offers reliability, improved security and saves time with its reduction of manual administration.
This is further aided by the ability to schedule changes to occur at later times or dates and the integration of data validation tools.
BlueCat IPAM offers IT teams global scope visibility into and control of the IP address space as well as their associated devices across all data centers, business units and geographies.
This, when used alongside the tracking and auditing features that allow organizations to instantly detect anomalies in a network, avoids the possibility of network outages.
It ensures resource availability at all times and BlueCat IPAM aims to increase performance continuously while reducing the occurrence of manual errors.
Price:
While pricing for BlueCat IPAM is not available on their website, you can contact them here for queries.
Download Website & Download Links:
http://www.ipamworks.com/IPAM.asp
8. BT Diamond IP
BT Diamond IP is unique in that it offers a full on, staff managed IP address management solution, ideally aimed at smaller IT departments without centralized or dedicated IT staff.
While this saves a great deal of time effort, the outsourcing of IPAM workloads is not ideal for organizations that already have their IPAM environments comfortably under control.
This software streamlines the management of an organizations entire IPv4 and IPv6 environment and life cycle across physical premises and remote branches as well as public and private cloud domains.
Designed as a comprehensive solution, BT Diamond IP is available as a software application. Alternatively, it comes pre-installed on Sapphire devices.
BT Diamond IP offers IT teams an overview of an organization’s network through an intuitive, graphical user interface, which supports customizability to the specific requirements of dynamic networks.
Its automation of the assignment and tracking of IP addresses and DNS names, alongside its DNS security products, ensures that networks are run smoothly and reliably.
With the aim of simplified monitoring and use, the software integrates DNS and DHCP with its management of IP addresses space.
This includes subnets as well as individual address assignment. Its auditing capabilities stretch out over the entire network, ensuring high availability of resources and BT Diamond IP further supports the speedy and accurate configuration of servers.
Its templates and policies also assist with this goal in the deployment of pre-set configurations.
Highly scalable and flexible, BT Diamond IP has the ability to manage large numbers of IP addresses and boasts a container mechanism that supports the organization of all IP addresses.
This allows IT teams to align and organize IP addresses to topology, geography, servers and domains, which supports the faster identification, troubleshooting and resolving of problems arising.
Its automated audit tracking and alerting capabilities, combined with IP address pool monitoring, immediately notifies IT teams of issues detected.
This prevents IP address depletions, which result in productively and monetary losses.
BT Diamond IP also provides clear administrator roles, promoting accountability and restricting certain abilities to specified personnel in an effort to control the management of IP addresses.
Price:
For BT Diamond IP pricing information, you can contact a specialist here.
Official Website & Download Links:
9. Paessler PRTG Network Monitor
The Paessler PRTG Network Monitor is a complete network monitoring tool that features IP monitoring and management capabilities, extending its reach to cloud environments, virtual machines and hardware in addition to networks.
Its central dashboard provides a quick and efficient overview of network and IP address status, changing from green to red immediately if the software detects a problem.
It combines its professional IP scanning software with its IP sniffer and IP traffic monitor, supporting IP scanning, IP checking, ping functions while additionally running multiple IP sensors.
With its inclusion of an app and compatibility with several mobile devices, IT teams can monitor status and compliance at all times, even if they step out of the office.
With a goal of saving time, the Paessler PRTG Network Monitor comes with over 200 pre-configured sensors and set up is quick, even for larger and more complex infrastructures.
Its Smart Setup feature scans the entire network during installation and automatically configures certain initial monitoring that IT teams can use as a starting point.
Summaries of the total amount of traffic coming in and leaving the network is available with the SNMP traffic sensor, allowing IT teams to identify weekly and monthly as well as seasonal fluctuations.
This allows for the predication of growth and capacity planning to ensure for traffic over long periods is accommodated, avoiding potential downtime on the network.
The Paessler PRTG Network Monitor easily identifies IP addresses and allows IT teams to highlight relevant IP addresses.
It pings all IP addresses and automatically begins monitoring their associated devices, saving time and increasing productivity, ensuring the management and monitoring of all necessary components.
With its use of Packet Sniffing or NetFlow sensors, top lists are automatically creates in the sensor overview, containing the three categories of top talkers, top connections and top protocols.
While also supporting the creation of additional top lists, these give IT teams the ability to identify the largest bandwidth consumers at a quick glance.
The Paessler PRTG Network Monitor provides fully customizable, built-in alarm notifications that are capable of sending alerts via email, SMS or page.
It teams can configure alarms to go off before system failures occur, allowing for the prompt troubleshooting and resolving of issues detected before they affect network availability.
There is further support for the customization of sensors for specific monitoring needs and the Paessler PRTG Network Monitor provides comprehensive reporting features as well as historical data reports.
These are exportable to PDF, HTML, SCV and XML format.
Price:
The pricing structure for Paessler PRTG Network Monitor starts at $1600.00.
Alternatively, you can download a 30 day trial here.
Official Website & Download Links:
https://www.paessler.com/prtg
Conclusion
As shown in the breakdown of IP address management tools, there are a variety of solutions available for the monitoring of IP addresses and related issues.
Each of these solutions specialize in improving network performance through their individual capabilities, creating secure networks free of hassles and complications.
Depending on the size and nature of your organization, there is an IP address management tool available to suit your specific requirements as well as your budget.
We hope the information supplied here helps choosing the best IP address management tool for you.
